The answer to that question depends upon where you are in the Adobe Photoshop universe: since the controversial announcement to go to a subscription model for their image editing products–forcing consumers/users to buy their products on a monthly/annual basis, rather than purchasing licenses outright–there has been an uproar in the creative community about this.

While we won’t debate whether Adobe is inherently evil here in this article, we can look at whether this is a good time for you to jump to this subscription service.

First off, $9.99/mo. is half the price that Adobe has been charging for this package under their new subscription service. So just within that framework, this is a great deal for anyone that’s been waiting to upgrade.

The details on Adobe’s website about the new pricing plan.

If, for instance, you are a Photoshop CS3 user who’s been holding off as long as possible before plunking down the big bucks to buy a full-fledged new version of Photoshop, you should probably grab this deal with both hands! Adobe has changed the rules anyway, since you can no longer get your own permanent PS license. And if you’re on one of the older versions, you’re missing out on a ton of great new features that have been developed in the last few years.

If, on the hand, you’re currently using Photoshop CS6, you may want to wait. As Charlie White explains in his excellent article about the new Photoshop ‘Creative Cloud’ version at Mashable, the main new features to consider are an even-better Smart Sharpen filter, the ability to use the functionality of the Raw processing window on any image as a filter (very, very cool), and the ability to import all of your old settings directly and automatically into the new version (convenient, but not critical to me). These are cool features, but if you bought CS6 within the last year or so and paid big bucks for it, maybe you’ll want to hold off.

Since I have the luxury of a Photoshop CS6 license through work, I’m don’t have to decide this now. But if I had to buy my software, this would be a tough, tough decision.

Lightroom is added as a sweetener to this monthly deal. A nice bonus.

The Lightroom product is included in this subscription, which is a nice add-on, as well as 20GB of online storage and the Behance website. (You probably already have some kind of online storage solution, so this may not be a selling point for you. And I don’t have any experience with Behance websites, but it looks like they’re trying to be LinkedIn for creatives.)

So there you have it: all the power of the newest Photoshop for $9.99 a month….at least until the price goes up.

Hi, I’m Andrew Boyd, a.k.a. The Discerning Photographer, and I hope this post has been interesting and informative. Please leave me a comment about it, let me know what you’d like to see more of on the site! You can also sign up for email delivery of all future articles or my RSS feed. Or subscribe to our Facebook page ,Google+ pageor our Twitter feed. Thanks!–DiscerningPhotog

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